Charts, maps and infographics

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“LAS VEGAS,” said Frank Sinatra, “is the only place I know where money really talks—it says, ‘Goodbye.'” But thanks to changing regulations and improvements in computing and mobile technology, you can now contrive to bid your money farewell from the comfort of your own home. Interactive gambling—a category that encompasses sports betting, poker, casino games, slots and other such wagers placed from a home computer, interactive TV or mobile phone—makes up an increasingly important part of the global gambling market, according to data from H2 Gambling Capital, but not an evenly distributed one.

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YOU are more likely to be killed by a non-communicable disease (NCD), like cancer or heart disease, than anything else. In 2008 they accounted for 63% of the 56m deaths worldwide. Growing populations and increased longevity are making the problem worse. By 2030, 22% of people in the OECD club of rich countries will be 65 or older, nearly double the share in 1990. China will catch up just six years later. About half of American adults already have a chronic condition, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, and as the world becomes richer the diseases of the rich spread farther.

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If wage bills at top football clubs were a reliable indicator of economic activity, Europe would be doing just fine

ON JUNE 8th the European football championship kicks off, when Poland play Greece in Warsaw. However, most money in European football lies with clubs rather than in international matches. The English Premier League has the biggest wage bill, according to an annual report by Deloitte, a consulting firm. Italy's Serie A has the second-biggest, equivalent to 75% of clubs' revenue (the highest ratio, with France's Ligue 1). Alas, Italian football is suffering from a new bout of an old financial ailment: allegations of match-fixing.

Greeks say they are the hardest-working European nation

ONCE in a while an opinion poll throws up an insight that is very revealing; yesterday it was the Pew Global survey of European countries. Among the usual questions about attitudes to the euro and the European Union, people in eight nations (Britain, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Poland and Spain) were asked which country in the European Union is the hardest-working. The Greeks ignored the obvious answer (Germany) and instead nominated themselves. (The other seven nations all plumped for Germany, as the table above shows.) Yet Greek perception is not quite as misaligned with reality as it seems.

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THE euro crisis drags on and on. Spanish yields on ten-year debt hit 6.6% on May 30th, just ten basis points lower than last November's nadir, as the costs of sorting out Spain's banks sink in. With ten-year US Treasuries now at a 60-year low, investors are heading across the Atlantic for the perceived safety of the world's second-largest debt market. According to The Economist's credit-crunch index, credit is now tighter in the euro area than it was at the height of the financial crisis (see top-left chart). This is having a detrimental effect on the real economy, as demonstrated in the following three charts.

Focus

IN 2010 China drank just 25,000 tonnes-worth of coffee, or less than half a cup per person, compared with over 1m tonnes of tea. But its coffee consumption will grow by an average rate of almost 40% a year from 2011 to 2015, according to forecasts by Barclays Capital. That will entail a big increase in the "coffee intensity" of China's economy: it will consume 18 tonnes of coffee for each $1 billion of GDP in 2015, against just eight tonnes in 2011. Barclays foresees other big changes in the commodity intensity of China's economy by the middle of the decade.

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Despite high unemployment companies say they find it hard to hire people

UNEMPLOYMENT has reached record levels in many countries. Yet more than a third of employers around the world are still having trouble filling vacancies, according to a ManpowerGroup survey of nearly 40,000 employers in 41 countries. Workers in skilled trades (electricians, plumbers, bricklayers and so on) are in shortest supply, followed by engineers and sales people. Talent shortages are most acute in Asia, particularly in Japan where an ageing population is exacerbating the problem.

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THIS chart is the nearest thing to a snapshot of everything you need to know about feeding the world. It comes from Cargill, a grain trading company, and shows which regions of the world have a food surplus or deficit, and how imports or exports have changed since 1965. The big changes in food production during that time came in South America (Brazil, mainly) and in Eastern Europe (Russia, mainly). The worry is that these increases were down to one-off factors: the farming of land that had been left alone in Brazil and the collapse of Communism in Russia.

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OUTSIDE China, people tend to assume that the country's impressive economic growth is due to exports. As the chart below, drawn from our special report on China's economy, shows, this notion has always been exaggerated and is now plain false. China grows thanks to high levels of investment—far higher than those seen in previous Asian miracles such as South Korea and Japan. The corollary of this is low levels of private consumption. Some argue that this must lead to imbalances that one day will send China's economy off a cliff. We disagree.

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A NEW study of chief executive turnover in the world's biggest 2,500 public companies by Booz & Company, a consultancy, shows that companies are appointing CEOs again after a period of hesitancy during the 2009-10 financial crisis. The rate of CEO turnover rose to 14.2%, its seven-year historical average. The study also shows that companies are experimenting with appointing CEOs from outside their organisations once again: outsiders accounted for 22% of the class of 2011—a big increase from the 14% in 2007 and a sharp reversal of a decade-long trend towards insiders.

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AS MANY newspaper owners have found out, it is extremely hard to make money by selling something that someone else is giving away. Postal services around the world have struggled to adapt since the the arrival of e-mail, often because they are tangled up in politics. Congress recently prevented the US Postal Service, which loses $25m a day, from closing some branches and ending Saturday delivery. In real terms, America's postage price has fallen since 2001. Its postal service is the cheapest of the countries for which we have figures, charging just $0.45 to send a regular sized letter within the country.

Focus

SOME 35% of consumers use a mobile phone for making payments, and 45% use one for banking, according to a recent survey of 14 countries by ACI Worldwide, a payment systems company, and Aite Group, aresearch firm. A group labelled “smartphonatics”—those who change their shopping, financial and payment behaviour as a result of owning a smartphone—are said to be driving demand for mobile financial services. Smartphonatics are most common in developing countries (India and China), probably because of the lack of access to traditional financial services.

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GREECE is in a bind. Because it is stuck with the euro, it cannot become more competitive by currency depreciation. Instead it must lower its real exchange rate, by cutting prices and wages. This is proving a painful process. One measure of progress, unit labour costs (the average cost of staffing per unit of output), is declining and will continue to do so, according to the OECD's latest Economic Outlook. Cheaper labour should result in cheaper goods, making Greek exports more attractive to foreign buyers and helping to improve the trade deficit.

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WITH the Republican nomination now beyond doubt, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney must duke it out in around ten key battleground states. The videographic below examines how the race is likely to develop. (It is best viewed in full-screen mode.)

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Africa is experiencing some of the biggest falls in child mortality ever seen

CHILD mortality in Africa has plummeted, belying the continent's “hopeless” reputation. The chart below shows the change over the most recent five years in the number of deaths of children under five per 1,000 live births.